To link to the entire object, paste this link in email, IM or documentTo embed the entire object, paste this HTML in websiteTo link to this page, paste this link in email, IM or documentTo embed this page, paste this HTML in website

New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
new ITlobilizer
No. 8 1029 Vermont Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. Feb '70
WHO PAYS? WHO PROFITS?
From the Economics Task Force
Who pays for the War? We do.
Who profits from the War? They do.
Stop paying! Stop the War!
Bring All the Troops Home Now!
As the Nixon Administration continues
its war against the people of Vietnam, more
and more Americans are discovering that
not only the Vietnamese suffer. So do we.
In our daily lives we pay for the war. We
pay for it by mingling the blood of our sons
with the blood of Vietnamese men, women,
and children. We pay for it by tormenting
the minds and souls of our sons with impossible dilemmas—by letting the Pentagon
order them to massacre civilians—and
then condemning those who obey their
orders as criminals. We leave them in
despair about right and wrong, and so
we pay the price of disrupted bodies and
minds.
But we also pay for the war from our
pockets and from the quality of our lives.
We pay in filthy water and poisonous air,
dirtied by the same mentality and the same
corporations that fill the air of Vietnam
with deadly defoliants. We pay inthe misery
of traffic in the cities because $150 billion
has gone into the war in five years, not
into liveable subways. We pay for the
war in rotting schools and despairing teachers, in "welfare" payments that leave
children still literally going to bed hungry
at night to be bitten by rats. We pay for the
war in super-tight money and sky-high
interest rates on our home mortgages,
so that hundreds of thousands of families
who want to buy houses cannot get loans
to do so. We pay for the war in the price
inflation of the last five years, and in the
taxes that gouge our wage and salary
earners. The real take-home pay of workers in the United States has declined in
the last five years.
And who profits, while we pay? The largest manufacturing corporations have had
their profits rise 60% from 1964 to 1968—
and more since then. Stockholders in the
five largest military contractors had their
assets increased 25% from 1964 to 1968—
and more since then. And they're greedy
for every penny of this blood money. For
the first time in our twentieth-century
history, the U.S. is fighting a war without
even pretending to equalize the war costs
with an excess profits tax. It is those who
are already rich who profit from this war,
while the middle class, the poor — the
hard working people — pay for it.
We intend to stop paying, to stop the
war, and to make the Nixon Administration bring all our sons and brothers home-
now! In order to do this, the New Mobilization will carry on a campaign this winter
and spring around the issue "Who Pays
for the War? We Do. Who Profits from
the War? They Do." It will feature thousands of work-place teach-ins April 14 in
offices and plants throughout the country,
nation-wide demonstrations in hundreds of
cities on April 15, and regional anti-corporate demonstrations later in April. This
is the schedule we plan:
(1) During the next few months we plan
to mobilize support for workers who strike
against large military contractors. There
may be many of these strikes because the
inflation and taxes spawned by the war are
pressing hard on many workers' pocket-
books. GE set the pattern. It is the country's second largest military contractor,
and reaps big profits for the owners. The
workers, however, were left in a squeeze
between the unfair taxes and sky-high prices, imposed by the war, and the frozen
wages imposed on them by GE. So they
struck. It was only the first national example of the refusal of workers to bear
the burden of lower real wages for this war
they did not choose. As such workers
strike, it is the responsibility of the antiwar movement to support them; not only in
their resistance to paying the costs of a
warfare economy, but also by demanding an
end to militarized priorities and a return
of the money — so that it may generate
better employment in constructive and
peaceful ways.
(2) During the next few months we will
organize discussions of the war in the
places where we work (because that's
where our taxes are collected for the
war, and our declining wages are handed
out to us.) We will meet to have "teach-
ins" during lunch hour, we will write
and circulate newsletters about the war,
we will demand soace for guest speakers
and experts and films on the war, we will
compare the taxes we pay with the taxes
the big corporations pay, we will find out
whether our own employers are taking part
in and profiting from the war, we will talk
about how to stop the war, we will set up
committees to plan for conversion of our
workplaces to peaceful work.
(3) On April 14, all over the country,
wherever people work, there will be great
National Workplace Teach-in on the War,
beginning simultaneously at noon.
(4) On April 15, Income Tax Day, all
over the country the New Mobe will mount
peaceful demonstrations calling on Americans to Stop Paying for the War, Stop the
War, and Bring All the Troops Home Now.
We will also present alternate tax demands
which reflect the needs of our people: a
clean environment, decent and inexpensive
medical care, adequate housing, and the dozens of other things which are so vitally
necessary precisely because of our false
and twisted priorities.
These April demonstrations should in all
cities have two focal points. They should
begin at noon with a rally at some major
center involved in the exploitation and op
pression of poor, Black, and other colonized peoples. This might be the Board of
Education, the transit Authority headquarters, the Welfare Department office, the
Public Housing Authority, a public hospital
intended to serve the poor, or some similar place. The choice should depend on
what local issue, in the judgement of movements of poor and colonized peoples, most
clearly shows how they are paying for
the war. (Many of the poor have incomes
so low they don't pay income taxes, but
pay in other ways—through indirect taxes,
the draft, inflation, and the worsening
condition of already miserable public services.) Then the demonstrators should
march to the local office of the Internal
Revenue Service, and there hold a second
rally to connect taxes directly with the
war itself and with the wage-price squeeze
on wage and salary earners.
If there are war-tax resisters in a particular community who want to explain why
and how they are refusing, they should be
encouraged to speak at the second rally.
If there are some people who want to take
part in peaceful civil disobedience at the
1RS office, specific times and places should
be arranged so that they can do so get
moral support, without involving other demonstrators who prefer to protest by picketing, singing, listening to the rally speakers, visiting the office to talk with 1RS
officials and present our demands, etc.
(5) In the last two weeks of April,
the New Mobe will demonstrate against the
war and war profiteering at the stockholders' meetings .of several major corporations. Choosing four or five firms will
be done after careful discussions with local
anti-war movements in the cities and regions where these stockholders' meetings
are being held; but among those being considered are GE Minneapolis), AT & T
(Cleveland), Boeing (Seattle), General Dynamics (not yet scheduled), Olin (Stamford,
Conn.), Gulf Oil (Pittsburgh), and Honeywell (Minneapolis). In addition the New
Mobe will sponsor support demonstrations
at local corporate off ices and outlets around
the country at the same times as the demonstrations at stockholders' meetings.
These demonstrations will criticize corporate complicity in the war itself, and
corporate profiteering from the war and
imperialism. We will demand an end to
the involvement of these corporations in
the economic exploitation of Third World
countries that results in U.S. interventions
like the Vietnam War.
We know that the only way we can stop
paying for the war with our blood and money
is to stop the war itself. The only way
we can end profiteering from the war is to
end the war itself. But there is another
side to the coin: The only way for us to stop
the war is to stop paying for it: to stop
fighting in it, stop dying in it, stop working
for it, stop paying taxes to it, stop suffering
high prices, bad schools, and worse hospitals because of it. The Spring is a beginning. Since the government does not intend
to end the war, we shall have to do so
by our own action. Stop Paying for the War!
Stop the War! Bring All the Troops Home
Now!
Off*
\Cndtkour
Awrher
•Sri»,

Copyright belongs to the individuals who created them or the organizations for which they worked. We share them here strictly for non-profit educational purposes. If you believe that you possess copyright to material included here, please contact us at asklibrary@wisconsinhistory.org. Under the fair use provisions of the U.S. copyright law, teachers and students are free to reproduce any document for nonprofit classroom use. Commercial use of copyright-protected material is generally prohibited.

Owner

The International Institute of Social History Library Collections; Wisconsin Historical Society

Copyright belongs to the individuals who created them or the organizations for which they worked. We share them here strictly for non-profit educational purposes. If you believe that you possess copyright to material included here, please contact us at asklibrary@wisconsinhistory.org. Under the fair use provisions of the U.S. copyright law, teachers and students are free to reproduce any document for nonprofit classroom use. Commercial use of copyright-protected material is generally prohibited.

Owner

The International Institute of Social History Library Collections; Wisconsin Historical Society

Full text

New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
new ITlobilizer
No. 8 1029 Vermont Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. Feb '70
WHO PAYS? WHO PROFITS?
From the Economics Task Force
Who pays for the War? We do.
Who profits from the War? They do.
Stop paying! Stop the War!
Bring All the Troops Home Now!
As the Nixon Administration continues
its war against the people of Vietnam, more
and more Americans are discovering that
not only the Vietnamese suffer. So do we.
In our daily lives we pay for the war. We
pay for it by mingling the blood of our sons
with the blood of Vietnamese men, women,
and children. We pay for it by tormenting
the minds and souls of our sons with impossible dilemmas—by letting the Pentagon
order them to massacre civilians—and
then condemning those who obey their
orders as criminals. We leave them in
despair about right and wrong, and so
we pay the price of disrupted bodies and
minds.
But we also pay for the war from our
pockets and from the quality of our lives.
We pay in filthy water and poisonous air,
dirtied by the same mentality and the same
corporations that fill the air of Vietnam
with deadly defoliants. We pay inthe misery
of traffic in the cities because $150 billion
has gone into the war in five years, not
into liveable subways. We pay for the
war in rotting schools and despairing teachers, in "welfare" payments that leave
children still literally going to bed hungry
at night to be bitten by rats. We pay for the
war in super-tight money and sky-high
interest rates on our home mortgages,
so that hundreds of thousands of families
who want to buy houses cannot get loans
to do so. We pay for the war in the price
inflation of the last five years, and in the
taxes that gouge our wage and salary
earners. The real take-home pay of workers in the United States has declined in
the last five years.
And who profits, while we pay? The largest manufacturing corporations have had
their profits rise 60% from 1964 to 1968—
and more since then. Stockholders in the
five largest military contractors had their
assets increased 25% from 1964 to 1968—
and more since then. And they're greedy
for every penny of this blood money. For
the first time in our twentieth-century
history, the U.S. is fighting a war without
even pretending to equalize the war costs
with an excess profits tax. It is those who
are already rich who profit from this war,
while the middle class, the poor — the
hard working people — pay for it.
We intend to stop paying, to stop the
war, and to make the Nixon Administration bring all our sons and brothers home-
now! In order to do this, the New Mobilization will carry on a campaign this winter
and spring around the issue "Who Pays
for the War? We Do. Who Profits from
the War? They Do." It will feature thousands of work-place teach-ins April 14 in
offices and plants throughout the country,
nation-wide demonstrations in hundreds of
cities on April 15, and regional anti-corporate demonstrations later in April. This
is the schedule we plan:
(1) During the next few months we plan
to mobilize support for workers who strike
against large military contractors. There
may be many of these strikes because the
inflation and taxes spawned by the war are
pressing hard on many workers' pocket-
books. GE set the pattern. It is the country's second largest military contractor,
and reaps big profits for the owners. The
workers, however, were left in a squeeze
between the unfair taxes and sky-high prices, imposed by the war, and the frozen
wages imposed on them by GE. So they
struck. It was only the first national example of the refusal of workers to bear
the burden of lower real wages for this war
they did not choose. As such workers
strike, it is the responsibility of the antiwar movement to support them; not only in
their resistance to paying the costs of a
warfare economy, but also by demanding an
end to militarized priorities and a return
of the money — so that it may generate
better employment in constructive and
peaceful ways.
(2) During the next few months we will
organize discussions of the war in the
places where we work (because that's
where our taxes are collected for the
war, and our declining wages are handed
out to us.) We will meet to have "teach-
ins" during lunch hour, we will write
and circulate newsletters about the war,
we will demand soace for guest speakers
and experts and films on the war, we will
compare the taxes we pay with the taxes
the big corporations pay, we will find out
whether our own employers are taking part
in and profiting from the war, we will talk
about how to stop the war, we will set up
committees to plan for conversion of our
workplaces to peaceful work.
(3) On April 14, all over the country,
wherever people work, there will be great
National Workplace Teach-in on the War,
beginning simultaneously at noon.
(4) On April 15, Income Tax Day, all
over the country the New Mobe will mount
peaceful demonstrations calling on Americans to Stop Paying for the War, Stop the
War, and Bring All the Troops Home Now.
We will also present alternate tax demands
which reflect the needs of our people: a
clean environment, decent and inexpensive
medical care, adequate housing, and the dozens of other things which are so vitally
necessary precisely because of our false
and twisted priorities.
These April demonstrations should in all
cities have two focal points. They should
begin at noon with a rally at some major
center involved in the exploitation and op
pression of poor, Black, and other colonized peoples. This might be the Board of
Education, the transit Authority headquarters, the Welfare Department office, the
Public Housing Authority, a public hospital
intended to serve the poor, or some similar place. The choice should depend on
what local issue, in the judgement of movements of poor and colonized peoples, most
clearly shows how they are paying for
the war. (Many of the poor have incomes
so low they don't pay income taxes, but
pay in other ways—through indirect taxes,
the draft, inflation, and the worsening
condition of already miserable public services.) Then the demonstrators should
march to the local office of the Internal
Revenue Service, and there hold a second
rally to connect taxes directly with the
war itself and with the wage-price squeeze
on wage and salary earners.
If there are war-tax resisters in a particular community who want to explain why
and how they are refusing, they should be
encouraged to speak at the second rally.
If there are some people who want to take
part in peaceful civil disobedience at the
1RS office, specific times and places should
be arranged so that they can do so get
moral support, without involving other demonstrators who prefer to protest by picketing, singing, listening to the rally speakers, visiting the office to talk with 1RS
officials and present our demands, etc.
(5) In the last two weeks of April,
the New Mobe will demonstrate against the
war and war profiteering at the stockholders' meetings .of several major corporations. Choosing four or five firms will
be done after careful discussions with local
anti-war movements in the cities and regions where these stockholders' meetings
are being held; but among those being considered are GE Minneapolis), AT & T
(Cleveland), Boeing (Seattle), General Dynamics (not yet scheduled), Olin (Stamford,
Conn.), Gulf Oil (Pittsburgh), and Honeywell (Minneapolis). In addition the New
Mobe will sponsor support demonstrations
at local corporate off ices and outlets around
the country at the same times as the demonstrations at stockholders' meetings.
These demonstrations will criticize corporate complicity in the war itself, and
corporate profiteering from the war and
imperialism. We will demand an end to
the involvement of these corporations in
the economic exploitation of Third World
countries that results in U.S. interventions
like the Vietnam War.
We know that the only way we can stop
paying for the war with our blood and money
is to stop the war itself. The only way
we can end profiteering from the war is to
end the war itself. But there is another
side to the coin: The only way for us to stop
the war is to stop paying for it: to stop
fighting in it, stop dying in it, stop working
for it, stop paying taxes to it, stop suffering
high prices, bad schools, and worse hospitals because of it. The Spring is a beginning. Since the government does not intend
to end the war, we shall have to do so
by our own action. Stop Paying for the War!
Stop the War! Bring All the Troops Home
Now!
Off*
\Cndtkour
Awrher
•Sri»,